John Summers of Arklow First Responders and his team are celebrating their 10th anniversary, here is what John had to say on behalf of the group.
“St.Valentine’s day maked a special day for us, as it marks our 10th anniversary as an active responder group with the National Ambulance Service, We first went live to answering cardiac emergencies on behalf of the Ambulance Service on 14th February 2011.
Without wishing to sound conceited, over that past 10 years we have gone from a small acorn into a mighty oak, We have gone through many stages of growth to get to the stage we’re at now. This is thanks to a lot of hard work, effort and determination from our founder Jamie Murphy/Breen, a steady stream of enthusiastic volunteers, support from The Ambulance Service and The Irish Heart Foundation to name but just a few.
Members of the Arklow Community Responders at the Arklow RNLI in February 2020
However the main reason for our continued growth and success is our community!
Without their support we would still be that acorn, Their generous and continued support both emotionally and financially has enabled us to provide our volunteers with the most up to date equipment, whether it be for live calls or our training sessions, the best PPE, our uniforms, promotional literature, right down to a facility for us to train and maintain our skills, again to name just a few.
Undoubtedly the best purchases their support enabled are Arklow’s 10 Public Access Defibrillators These life saving devices are a credit to them as a community and shows everything that’s good about a community coming together to look after one and other.
We could keep typing here and would never be satisfied that we used enough superlatives to express our thanks to them all, so We’ll just say two words and hope that our sincerity and gratitude beams out from this article. THANK YOU
Tenth Public Access DefibrillatorWe’re delighted to announce on our tenth birthday that Arklow has it’s tenth Public Access Defibrillator (P.A.D.) It is situated at Sweeney’s Garage & Taxi Hire on the Sea Road (Eircode: Y14NH56) This P.A.D. like all others will available 24/7/365 should it be needed in a cardiac emergency.
Thank You to JJ & Sweeney’s for supplying the necessary power and CCTV to host it. These life saving devices are only in situ through the ongoing support and generosity of our local community. Thank you to them for their tremendous, overwhelming and continued support.”
